Once - Morris Gleitzman

Once I escaped from an orphanage in the mountains and I didn't have to do any of the things you do in escape stories. Dig a tunnel. Disguise myself as a priest. Make a rope from nun robes knotted together. I just walked out through the main gate. I slither down the mountainside through the cool green forest, feeling very grateful to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, and Adolf Hitler. Grateful that after the Nazis left this morning, the nuns didn't lock the gate. Grateful that this mountainside is covered in pine needles rather than tangled undergrowth and thorns.

Felix is a ten year old boy who lives in an orphanage. All the other kids have parents who are dead, but not Felix, his parents are coming back… Felix tires of waiting for his parents to return for him, so he heads off across country to find them himself. His story is both heartbreaking and heart-warming as he searches for his family and discovers a whole world he never knew existed.

Each new chapter starts Once, Felix’s voice rings strong and true with a quirk and zeal that captures his age and innocence. A well crafted story that follows the persecution of the Jews through the eyes of a naive young boy. At times hard to read, Once is an amazing tale of adventure, courage and childhood innocence. Although this is a children's fiction book, given the content, I probably wouldn't recommend it for younger children, it’s more suited for 9-10 years+.  

Once I went on my first train journey, but I wouldn't call it exciting - I’d call it painful and miserable.   There are so many of us in this boxcar that most of us have to stand up. Every time the train lurches, we lurch too and squash each other.

http://www.morrisgleitzman.com/

UnEnchanted - Chandra Hahn

“You’re right. You’re old enough to know the truth, to share the burden.” Sara waited until Charlie had left the kitchen and headed for a second round of favorite objects to pack away. “Mina, I’ve lied to you about your name, about everything.”“Okay,” she said, her voice sounding shaky.“Our last name isn’t Grime. It’s Grimm. And for as long as I could remember, we’ve been trying to outrun it.”“Outrun what exactly?”“Outrun what killed your father years ago…the Grimm curse.”

Fractured fairy tales are always fun to write, and read, but this is a different take on them completely. The story focuses around Mina Grime (Grimm) a teenager who always has ‘weird’ things happen to her. When they happen her mother freaks out and they move, again. UnEnchanted focuses on Minas story, it introduces the reader to her Mom, brother, best friend and high school crush while interweaving some of them into various fairy tales without her knowledge. Turns out Mina is a Grimm and her ancestors were cursed into completing fairy tale quests. It killed Mina’s Dad and so her mother has always run from it. Mina decides she has to protect her mute baby brother from the same fate so she tries to take on the tales herself. A fascinating take on some well known Brothers Grimm tales. If you enjoy stories with faeries and big bad wolves, with a little high school angst and romance, then this is a tale for you.

http://chandahahn.com/

The Iron King - Julie Kagawa

I AWOKE TO LOW VOICES, talking in furtive tones, just beyond the curtains. I tried to love, but it felt like my body was wrapped in cotton, my head filled with gauze. I struggled to keep my eyes open. On the other side of the sheets, I saw two silhouettes.     “Don’t do anything reckless,” warned a low, gravelly voice. The nurse, I thought, wondering, in my delirium, if she would give me more of that chocolaty stuff. “Remember, your duty is to watch the girl. You must not do anything that will draw attention.”

The Iron King is book no.1 in The Iron Fey series. Meghan Chase is a normal teenage girl, at least she was, until her 16th birthday. She comes home from school to discover a changeling in the place of her baby brother and discovers her best friend is in fact Robin Goodfellow. Following a series of strange events Meghan finds herself travelling into a mythical world she thought only existed in stories. What begins as a journey to save her baby brother turns into an adventure and a fight for her freedom.

http://juliekagawa.com/wordpress/

Wake - Amanda Hocking

Even over the sea, Thea could smell the blood on her. When she breathed in, it filled her with a familiar hunger that haunted her dreams. Except now it disgusted her, leaving a horrible taste in her mouth, because she knew where it came from. “Is it done?” she asked. She stood on the rocky shore, staring over the sea, her back to her sister.

Wake focuses on easy going teenager Gemma. She lives with her father and overbearing older sister Harper. Gemma splits the majority of her time between swim training and school. The open water calls to Gemma, any free time she has is spent swimming in the sea, especially night swims when the cove is quiet and peaceful. Harper is about to head off to college with her best friend (and neighbour) Alex, whom Gemma starts to take an interest in. On the outside, life appears to be moving along for all of them as planned.

Over the summer break three strange and secretive girls turn up in town. They make Harper and Gemma’s skin crawl and Gemma seems to keep bumping into them all over town.  One night Gemma goes swimming on her own when she sees Lexi, Penn and Thea on the shore in the cove. Lexi calls her over and Gemma spends the night with them. The following morning she wakes, bruised from head to toe, on the beach. Wake is the first book of the watersong series and is all about Gemma getting to know Lexi, Penn and Thea, while also coming to terms with what they have done to her.

http://www.worldofamandahocking.com/

The Reapers are the Angels - Alden Bell

The night comes, and when the sun rises again it rises over a motionless desert, over streets full of rusty, broken-down automobiles, over tumbleweed towns filled with derelict buildings, signposts twisted and bent so that their arrows become nonsensical, pointing into the dirt or up into the sky, billboards whose sunny images and colorful words flap unglued in the breeze, shop windows caked with the grime of decades, bicycles with flat tires abandoned in the middle of intersections, their wheels turning slowly like impotent tin windmills, some buildings charred and burnt out, others half fallen down, multistory tenements split down the middle, standing like shoebox dioramas, pictures still hanging on the upright walls, televisions still in place on their stands teetering over the gaping edge of the floor where the rest of the living room has collapsed to the ground in great mountains of concrete and dust and girder like the abandoned toys of a  giant child.

Set in a post-apocalyptic time, it’s never mentioned how people started turning, just that they did. Temple is the illiterate young heroine of the story that follows her on adventures in a world that she was born into. She never knew the world before, where meatskins and slugs didn't patrol the streets to attack and devour any living things they come into contact with. Seeing the world through the eyes of 16 year old is nothing knew but Temple has seen things and done things even she can’t comprehend. She journeys through American states coming across desirables and undesirables. The story is crafted with punctuation but is lacking speech marks which adds another unknown element into the story. Sometimes I found myself doubling back just so I had it clear in my head who said what and if it were out loud or in her head. She meets some interesting people and we get a peek into how different circumstances lead people to face hard times in different ways. Some people aid strangers whereas other people are always out for themselves, following their own set of rules or reclaiming something they felt was owed to them from another lifetime. Temple is coming to grips with being a monster while also not realising she acts like an angel. The story gets even weirder when she rescues a man (who she refers to as Dummy) that she passes in her car, being chased by a horde while carrying his expired granny. Very rarely does a tale full of zombies not also come hand in hand with gore. Although not extremely graphic, this book has its fair share of shocks and horrors. In spite of that, I found the ending a tad heart breaking. It made sense and fitted in with the story well, but I was still gutted after growing to know and love several of the characters.

If you enjoy the post-apocalyptic/zombie movies/stories then I would definitely recommend you give this book a read.  

http://www.joshuagaylord.com/

Awaken - Katie Kacvinsky

He studied the tree trunk. “This planet will outlive us all. People are just lucky enough to pass through. But we’re so self-absorbed - we don’t get it. People are deluded enough to think we can conquer the planet. Or that we’re powerful enough to destroy it.” Justin shook his head and stepped back. “But we’ll never have that kind of power. Humans are like every other species. We’ll come and go. We’re just passing through.”

When I first saw the cover of awaken it was sitting on a book stand, something about the jar with the flowers caught my attention. I opened it up and read the first chapter, I was hooked. There is something to be said about a book that grabs your attention from the very first words.

When Madeline was in her early years of school suddenly the world around her changed drastically. High School shootings had lead to mass shoots, which then lead to mass bombings. Trying to make a radical change, to save the lives of thousands of children, the world around her began to move their children to Digital Schools. Fast forward twelve or so years and Madeline is almost 18, and about to attend her first ever tutor class with real people. Most of her time is spent securely in her house, attending digital school, painting on her digital canvas, plugging into different social chat rooms or going on scenic runs (on the treadmill in her basement). Each year her (old skool) mum (who reads printed magazines instead of digital ones! THE HORROR!) hands down real paper books to Madeline, from years gone by, before trees were plastic and needed their leaves painted for the fall.

It’s terrifying to read something that is so close, and could in fact become our reality. Awaken follows Madeline’s journey as she makes friends, and meets people who hide in the shadows of society. People who aren't as ‘plugged in’ as most of the zombies existing in society she ‘lives’ in.  Although it comes with the traditional teen angst of first love and dealing with authoritative parents. I really enjoyed reading about the world through Madeline’s eyes as she begins to relish the sound of her name and starts to wonder and think about the things she has been taught and the things she starts to see. It really made me think about all the technology we plug kids into at such an early age. Education & technology are moving so fast, we no longer have a where to next, we are standing on the edge of a cliff waiting to see what hurdles come at us next. Highly recommend this to anyone who loves dystopian fiction. I also just realised there's a sequal so I can't wait to see where that leads.

http://katiekacvinskybooks.wordpress.com/

The Fault in our Stars - John Green

Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka and take pot.”Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”

Hazel (or Hazel Grace as she is so often referred to) has cancer (a side effect of dying). It wrecked her lungs and nearly killed her but now shes on a drug that keeps it from growing. Her mother thinks she is depressed (Hazel notes that depression is not a side effect of cancer, it’s another side effect of dying, like almost everything). Hazel’s doctor agrees so she gets shipped off to support group even though she doesn't think it will do her any good.

Upon arrival at support group she sees the regulars, one being a boy named Isaac who is losing his vision. Its through Isaac that she meets Augustus (also often referred to as Augustus Waters). There begins this epic tale of what turns out to be the adventures of a life time. The story follows Hazel and Augustus with their superior wit and intellect through ups and downs, adventures and sorrow.

It’s a remarkable book and I was very pleased to see they left very little out when they made the movie. Some bits made me laugh out loud while others made me cry. Beautifully written, I really enjoyed the characters and their interactions with one another. I find it hard to believe anyone could read this and not fall in love with the Augustus Waters character and his outlook on life.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, /But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2

http://johngreenbooks.com/